This is an open thank you letter to Tricky Dick Nixon. Thank you for Watergate. Thank you for being such a terrible and soulless despot. Thanks for popping the nation’s collective cherry — removing our denial and blind trust in our leaders.

Thanks for helping to create an intensely strong bond between my parents and me. The endless hours of the hearings (while my mom finished needlepoint after needlepoint, my dad periodically shouting “assholes!” at the TV screen) showed me how to distrust, to question, to analyze, to not lay down and take it.

Thanks for starting the chain of events that led me to my obsession with the film “All the President’s Men”, which I saw about 20 times before the advent of VCR technology (and a whole lot of times since then).

Thanks for being such a weirdo, and such a big bag of contradictions. Thanks for loving your wife to the point of idolatry — adding an intriguing underlay of humanity to the whole confusing mix that is you, RMN. You!

Without you, the seventies wouldn’t have been such a crazy, broken-carousel psycho time in which to grow up. And grow up I did, covered with a hardened shell of cynicism (made by you!) that helped to deflect disappointment after outrage after depressive event that has been the march of American politics in front of my jaded eyes.

Without you, I would have set myself on fire by now. So, thanks for that, for making it clear that Bad Powerful People pretty much get what they want (so try not to trip about it too much).

Oh, Dick. Dick! Here’s to you!